Advertising veteran Paul Wannenmacher has carved out his third documentary, showing the serious, storytelling side of the creative guru.
His latest, “Civil War Battle of Newtonia,” debuted Feb. 19 at Downstream Casino Resort, just 40 miles from the southwest Missouri town that serves as the backdrop for this war tale.
“I don’t hunt, fish or play golf, so I have time for documentaries,” jokes Wannenmacher, owner of Wannenmacher Advertising Co.
Serious with his writing and producing skills, Wannenmacher’s Newtonia documentary captures the rage, strategy and surprising Native American participation in the early 1860s, when Confederate and Union forces clashed across the four-state area, forcing residents to choose sides. A year of fighting – starting with the August 1861 battle at Wilson’s Creek, the Civil War’s first major battle in southwest Missouri – culminated in fall 1862 in Newtonia, 10 miles east of Neosho.
Troops were attracted to the area’s rich land, flowing streams, grain mills and iron ore deposits. After setting up at Camp Coffee, Confederate forces on Sept. 27 occupied the house of Judge Matthew H. Ritchey, a slave-owning unionist, for their southwest Missouri headquarters. Two days later marked the beginning of the Battle of Newtonia, which was the only time outside Indian territory where Native Americans took up arms against each other.
The documentary’s most intense scenes by re-enactors are largely built on Confederate Col. Douglas H. Cooper’s written report, narrated by KY3’s Steve Grant: “The battle was now raging in all parts of the field. Their masses of infantry could be plainly seen, advancing in perfect order with guns and bayonets glittering in the sun. The booming of cannon, the bursting of shells, the air filled with missiles of every description, the rattling crashes of small arms, the cheering of our men and the war hoop of our Indian allies all combined to rend the scene both grand and terrific.”
When the dust settled in late afternoon Sept. 30, 1862, 50 Union soldiers had fallen and 195 were wounded or missing. Confederates had won the battle, even though they lost a dozen men and 66 of their own were wounded or missing.
Civil War fighting continued in the area until April 1865, but hostilities persisted with midnight raids to burn homes and murder inhabitants, leaving towns such as Sarcoxie nearly wiped out.
“Both the Federals and Confederates had a strategy of quote, ‘Kill ‘em, starve ‘em or burn ‘em out,’” the documentary says. “It could easily be understood that every survivor had a reason to hate someone following the war.”[[In-content Ad]]
